


Years ago Yesterday

by charlottechill



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Not Quite Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:13:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/charlottechill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A long-winded tag to "Obsession"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years ago Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nolwe](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=nolwe), [lady garnett](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lady+garnett), [DichotomyStudios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DichotomyStudios/gifts).



> A response to Nolwe's Daybook Christmast stocking request about "Obsession" ...with apologies to every Chris fan. Chris is shamefully absent from a story that positively centers around him. Chalk it up to first drafts on a rush, and feel free to send me an edited draft back; I love fixing things!

Years Ago Yesterday  
From Obsession  
“My wife died… three years ago yesterday. Always makes me a little wooly.”

A sincere thank you to the stocking recipients; I hadn’t watched “Obsession” in quite some time, and I had forgotten just how intimate, how close, how knowledgeable Buck and Chris are of each other—and how much it shows, in this episode. Getting to re-watch the corral scene, where Buck and Chris are so gentle with each other, and so honest, was a breath of inspiring, fannish, Chris/Buck air. It was like a Christmas gift to me. 

 

Lots of folks, they didn’t know who they were. Spent their whole lives trying to be something else, someone else. That wasn’t an affliction that visited Buck Wilmington. He knew exactly who he was. 

He wasn’t smart, he wasn’t educated, and he wasn’t particularly decent. But he was good with his fists and good with a gun, great with the ladies and better with his heart than many an educated man. He made a promise, and he kept it… well, as long as distractions didn’t get in his way. 

He was easily distracted. He knew that, too. 

He wasn’t a man to hold useless grudges when forgiving got him to a saloon or a woman or the dinner table quicker. Some grudges, though, he knew he’d never outgrow. Ella Gaines had made the top of his list—for being a woman so conniving as to give women a bad name; for ordering the murders of an innocent mother and a child Buck had loved almost like they were his own; for hurting Chris so badly. 

Months had passed since the business with Ella Gaines, and Buck was beginning to wonder if it was a wound Chris could heal from. It wasn’t the bullet; Chris had been spitting nails in a week, walking in two, and riding in five. Before the walking, even, had come the practice shooting: deadly accurate, maybe more so than ever before, and so fast, it nearly stole Buck’s breath to watch Chris move. 

The gunplay wasn’t so new, and Buck didn’t have to work too hard to imagine the face Chris painted on those targets. Chris’s rage wasn’t even new. But the things that were new troubled Buck deeply. 

Chris had turned a cold shoulder to Vin—that was new. Maybe the burden of guilt was too much for Chris to bear alone. And Vin, the best aim of any of them, had missed when he’d fired on Ella Gaines. Vin, the best tracker of any of them, had found neither hide nor hair of Ella Gaines. 

Buck could see how those failures ate at Vin too, worse than they ate at the rest of his friends. He tried to explain that Chris was just picking up on Vin’s own guilt, and hoped Vin knew it was only the truth—Buck knew plenty about that from personal experience. He went to great pains to ease the tensions that ran thick through their numbers as fall turned to winter. 

“Leave him alone, JD,” he’d counsel. “You haven’t got the slightest idea what he’s going through.” 

“Don’t mother him, Nathan,” he’d warn. “You’re as like to see the eye of his gun barrel, you nag him too much.” 

“He’ll come around, Vin,” he’d say. “Trust ol’ Buck on that.” 

“Think I’m doing the right thing?” he’d ask Josiah, comfortable in the knowledge that the old preacher was more content to give sage advice than to accept any half-assed effort Buck might offer him. 

“You take his money one more time, Ezra, and I’ll skin you,” he’d say. Empty threats, empty promises, but it got them all by. 

Vin had taken to sleeping in the jail as winter approached. Buck stopped by for coffee when he was in town, and Vin would look at him with them sky blue eyes, like he was trying to read Buck’s mind. Whatever he saw seemed to soothe him a little. “Don’t know how you put up with him sometimes,” Vin said once. 

Buck shrugged. “He grows on you.” He hadn’t lied to Vin; he was convinced that Vin was bearing the brunt of Chris’s ire this go-round because Vin was blaming himself. Chris Larabee picked the damnedest times to agree with people; he’d done the same thing to Buck, years ago. 

Buck talked to Chris, when Chris let him ramble a bit—out at his shack mostly, where Chris would act almost normal for minutes or hours at a time. Buck told him to remember who stood by him, told him not to let the dead take him away from the living again. Once, near Christmas, he reminded Chris that none of this was Vin’s fault, but it seemed like that had been the wrong thing to say. 

Chris pushed out the door of his shack and Buck followed to find him standing just under the porch overhang, watching winter rain drizzle from a gray and dismal sky. He looked slight against the gray weather even though he still wore his boots and pants. His back was turned to Buck, so Buck just stood in the doorway and tried not to shiver with the cold. 

“I know whose fault it is, Buck,” Chris said to the rain, the words as hard as any he’d ever said. “It’s mine.” 

Buck sighed, cast one last, longing look back to the wood stove and the orange heat he could see through the vents, and took a step further into the cold. He reached slowly; Chris in this mood wasn’t the most predictable of men. But Chris let him touch, let him squeeze the knotted muscles in his shoulder. “It’s Ella Gaines’ fault, Chris,” he said, trying to make his words as gentle as his touch. “You don’t get a say in it. You ain’t responsible for the actions of a crazy woman.” 

Chris pivoted on his heel and stared up at Buck. “How long do I get to claim ignorance?” he snarled. “All those months I spent with her before you and I met? How about them days in her dead husband’s bed, huh? I went back to her just because she came calling, and I didn’t see any of this.”

Buck reached again but Chris twitched hard enough that Buck dropped his hand to his side. “You can’t blame yourself for that, Chris. None of us saw it at first. _I_ didn’t see it, and I know women better’n you know your right hand. If there was something to for any man to see, I’d have seen it.”

Chris’s body trembled, just enough that Buck squinted to be sure of what he was seeing. The man was shaking with rage. “You don’t know women half as well as you think you do,” he said. “You only know what you wish they were.” 

Buck frowned, stung by what might be just a little bit of the truth, but before he could think of something to say in reply, Chris went on. “And you did see it,” he said flatly. “So did Vin.” 

The man’s honesty was unassailable. Damn him to hell. “I didn’t see the truth,” he hedged, “and neither did Vin. All we saw was you leaving us.” His gut felt heavy, like he’d swallowed a pile of rocks. “I reckon that’d make us look a little closer than most.” 

Chris’s teeth ground audibly together over the light patter of rain, and his next words were pinched out between them. “I bedded her. I fucked her and fell asleep, and she snatched up tokens for her little shrine. I was ready to stay with her. That wasn’t her fault; that was mine.” 

There wasn’t any fault to be had, really. “Chris,” he said, like he would to a child. “She’s a lunatic. Don’t send yourself down that road, pard. You’ve done been down it once, and there’s nothin’ there you want.” 

“There’s Ella Gaines’ head on a block, or in a noose, or at the end of my gun barrel.” 

Buck nodded and stepped in close, carefully raising his hands, surprised when Chris just watched them with dead eyes. “Guess there’s that,” he said, and pulled his friend into an embrace. Chris hadn’t cried, to Buck’s knowledge, and Buck didn’t expect such an outpouring now; he was just glad when Chris’s tension ebbed a little, and that lean body sagged against his. He stood there, distantly glad for the warmth against his front, and waited for Chris to gather himself again. He doubted that killing Ella Gaines would make any of this right for Chris, because Sarah and Adam would still be dead. But Buck took no comfort in the knowledge, not with Chris hurting like he was, wearing his pain on his sleeve like a mourning band. 

It must be a hell of a weight to bear for Chris, he mused, knowing that he’d taken such pleasures from the evil that had nearly destroyed him—that had destroyed a family that was one-of-a-kind. Buck couldn’t imagine it, but the experience had made him more circumspect with the ladies, and just a bit more wary in general. Chris had admonished him for it once or twice, but Josiah, Ezra, and even JD tended to credit him with good sense. He didn’t have the heart to tell them it was mostly fear—fear that some woman would do such a thing to him, and destroy a faith in the gentler sex that was the very heart of him. 

He’d wondered, off and on, what he might have done differently—at the Gaines ranch or years earlier. He hadn’t been able to decide with any certainty what he _could_ have done differently, so right there and then, with Chris in his arms and winter rain falling down, he gave up on his musings. 

Buck Wilmington wasn’t a man to tilt at windmills. 

* * *

Christmas came and went, a somber and drunken affair that passed in near silence in Chris’s cabin. He rode into town on boxing day and continued to try and make peace, for his friends and for Chris—even for himself. He plied Vin and JD with Chris’s secrets, helping them understand. He plied Chris with affection, carefully meted out. From the shooting through the winter, Chris had been as cold as a January snow with pretty much everyone, and deadlier than usual to any ill-doer who warranted it. But just like the winter that had come and gone, Chris began to thaw with the spring. 

Chris was a quieter man, back in his somber clothes. They spent more time out of town, him and Chris—Chris because too many strangers riled him like little else could, and Buck because he’d gotten into the habit of it over the winter, when he’d been worried Chris might decide to eat his gun. 

Chris was past that, at least. The pitch-black clouds of anger that had hung over him had faded into a gray, familiar withdrawal. 

Buck got used to the new way of things, to looking for any sign that Chris might smile; to watching Chris make new work for himself around the shack. His mares had foaled so he had colts to bring to halter, but Chris had already announced his plans to sell them off come autumn. He wasn’t about to carry on with dream that had turned nightmare one time too many. 

As the fourth anniversary of Sarah’s death approached, Buck found himself looking for familiar signs: a little more eagerness about whiskey, a little more acid on the tongue. The signs didn’t come. In fact, Chris’s mood stayed so constant that it began to make Buck worry. There wasn’t a week left before the day, and Chris was usually packing and biting people’s heads off by this time.

They worked together beside the corral, mucking hay over the fence, when Buck brought up the subject. “Thought we might ride over to Purgatorio together,” he offered, testing the waters. 

“Nah,” Chris said. 

“Don’t want company?” Buck asked. 

“Ain’t going,” Chris replied. “Nothing in Purgatory I need.” 

Buck felt his eyebrows climb high. He’d shared a one-room shack with Chris every other night for months, now; he knew for a fact that everything still worked on the man. “Chris,” he admonished. “That ain’t the way.” 

Chris huffed a breath, not quite laughter but not annoyance, either. “You think a whore’s gonna fix what ails me? It never did before.”

Buck shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”

Chris snickered at that, and shook his head. “Ain’t interested,” he replied. 

Buck pondered that for days, through the anniversary Chris had never missed before now, and right up to the morning Chris had got himself shot. It was the same day Miss Hilda had died, Buck reflected, and he met a watery summer sun with low spirits and lower expectations. He’d stayed in town the night before, hoping to find someone warm to hold onto, but he couldn’t go to the trouble of courting, not even a working girl just for a night. So he said his good mornings all ’round, and shared a quick cup of coffee with Vin at the jail before breakfast. 

Vin was content with the ground he’d gained back with Chris, and Buck was too. They were back to the way they’d been before, comfortable in a room together without saying a word. “Well, Vin,” he said rising to stretch his back. “Be seeing you.”

Vin nodded curtly. “Tell him we’ll keep an eye out.”

“Sheeit, Vin, he knows that. Want to come and get some grub?”

Vin shook his head and pulled out the stack of wanted posters he collected in the sheriff’s desk. Ella’s face had been in there since the trials that had hanged Jack Averill and those of his boys who’d survived the firefight. That fact gave them all some comfort; she couldn’t hide forever. 

“Your loss,” Buck said as he headed for the door. “Miss Jane’s cooking.” 

He met up with Josiah and JD, and made a point of pushing food the kid’s way to keep him from talking. 

“Well,” he said, thinking he shouldn’t be putting it off. “Guess I’ll head on out to Chris’s.” 

“All right, Buck,” Josiah said. “This ain’t gonna be an easy day for him.”

“For you neither, Buck,” JD said. “I mean, Hilda dying and—“ JD looked at Josiah and stopped mid-word. “What?” 

Buck caught Josiah rolling his eyes, and forced a chuckle. “Kid’s tombstone’s gonna read, ‘what’d I say?’” he joked. “Shut up, kid. A man’s gotta do what a mans’ gotta do.”

“Well, better you than us,” JD muttered around a mouthful. 

Buck let it slide; the kid wasn’t resentful exactly. He was just tired of waiting for things to get better. 

Buck took breakfast out to Chris, scrambled eggs and bacon sandwiched between fluffy biscuits. 

He found things to talk about that had nothing to do with killing or women or kids—which left him parched for stories by noon, but Chris didn’t complain. He even threw in a comment here and there, or prodded Buck with an old memory when Buck went silent for too long. 

They shared supper and turned in early, Chris to his rope bed and Buck to the pallet he’d had ticked for him months ago just so he wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor anymore. It was warm enough that they’d let the fire in the stove burn out, and after the last candle had guttered Buck had to wonder, lying there in the dark, just what the hell he was hiding from out here. He didn’t have the impression he was moving toward something, but he didn’t have a sense that he had anywhere else to be, either. 

It was a damned unnerving feeling, when not even the sport of women and liquor could inspire him. 

The next morning Chris woke him by sliding under Buck’s blanket. His longjohns shhshed against the mattress, and Buck felt the tension in his friend—a tension that transferred to Buck where Chris’s body touched him all down his side. “A year ago yesterday,” Chris said. 

He lifted an arm to make room, and tugged Chris in close. “Yeah. But that ain’t gonna be a new anniversary you’re celebratin’, Chris. I mean it.” 

A breath of air gusted out of Chris, its heat and warmth tickling Buck’s neck. “If you think for a minute,” Chris said, “that me listening to you natter on for hours about nothing is a celebration of any kind, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” 

Maybe he didn’t. He surely hadn’t expected this—this, whatever it was. The sun wasn’t even up. “I know you all right,” Buck huffed anyway. “You probably thought you deserved to suffer.”

Chris surprised him with a snort of laughter that might have been the first genuine amusement Buck had witnessed in Chris since that sunny ride into Ella Gaines’ territory. “You think that’s why I keep you around?”

Buck blinked at that pronouncement. It hadn’t occurred to him in all this time that Chris was letting him be here. But of course that’s what it was; if Chris had wanted him gone Chris would have run him off. He knew just how to do it, and had done it before. “Maybe,” he ventured. 

Chris yawned and lay his head down on Buck’s bare shoulder. His hair, as fine as Buck remembered it, brushed against Buck’s throat. “Shut up and go back to sleep.”

He couldn’t, though, not even when Chris’s breath evened out in slumber. He lay there blinking as darkness faded into gloaming. He watched the pre-dawn sun chase shadows across the ceiling boards, and wondered at what an ignorant sonofabitch he was. He’d let himself get distracted with Chris for over a year now, and hadn’t even realized it. Chris had let him, day in and day out, pushing himself from heavy drink to moody silence to a careful creeping back to life. 

And Buck hadn’t noticed. 

He risked movement, squirming onto his side and facing Chris. His friend’s head lay pillowed on Buck’s arm, and sunlight picked out details: beard stubble that should have been off-putting; a scowl so permanent it was there while Chris slept, stubborn to the core. 

Buck lifted a hand and rubbed his finger against the crease between Chris’s eyebrows, wondering if this was what he’d been wanting to do all this time. The crease softened and Chris’s lips twitched in a tiny shadow of a smile. His hips shifted against Buck’s, shocking Buck with morning arousal and the urge to thrust back. “Go back to sleep,” Chris mumbled. “Time enough later to figure it out.” 

Lots of folks didn’t know who they were at all. They spent their whole lives trying to be something else, someone else. 

Maybe Buck Wilmington was one of them.


End file.
